don’t panic. We’ll fix it. I take it there’s more on the stairs?”
“You take it correct.”
Charlie’s tiny mouth opened and closed.
“You’re a real hothead, Ryan.” She added, “What if they came in a vehicle?”
“He said he saw them in the street. Across the street.”
“Oh, right. Good memory.”
Ryan watched as half the bar patrons began dragging bodies toward the far end of
the room. J.B. sucked on his cheroot, blew smoke out in a thin plume. He said,
“Listen. They used gas on the train. Why didn’t they use it on the Old Man?”
“That’s a rhetorical question, J.B. You know the answer.”
“Hmm. They mortared gas canisters in.” He clicked his tongue irritably.
“Something we didn’t make allowances for. Gas gets in through cracks and tiny
holes. So all our people are dead. Nothing we can do there. Say it’s a
short-term agent. After dispersal they now have to open up all those land wags
and trucks and the two war wags. But they can’t, because they know that every
damned vehicle owned by us is packed with boobies. Everybody knows that. And if
they start smashing out window glass or blowing in doors, the whole caboodle
could go up and they lose everything. So they’re stuck.” A dark smile of
satisfaction fled across the thin man’s sallow features. “They’re well and truly
stuck.”
“So they have to parley with the Old Man,” said Ryan. “So they have to take him
alive.”
“Nontoxic agent.”
“Nothing else’d do.”
“Yeah.”
“So that means,” continued Ryan, “the Old Man’s out. But he’d have made sure all
the vehicles were tight. So that means Teague’s goons have got more vehicles on
their hands they can’t touch, move or do any thing at all with.”
“Yeah.”
J.B. blew a smoke ring. It sailed up toward the ceiling, shimmying, expanding,
drifting out from the center, breaking up.
“And that means,” said Ryan, “we’re the only free agents in town.”
“Yeah.”
“But they don’t know what we know. No one knows that.”
J.B. murmured, “That little extra.” He glanced at Ryan. “How long we got?” Ryan
checked his watch. “Rough timing, I’d say about four hours.”
“Gotta work fast. What’s your plan, war chief?” The room was now clear of
stiffs. Incredibly those who remained in the bar were drinking and talking as
though nothing had happened at all in the past ten minutes or so. He caught Ole
One-Eye’s single orb, pink rimmed, the eyelid fluttering in a macabre and
sardonic wink. He stared at Sam, Rintoul, finally at J.B. He thought of those on
the main train, maybe a couple of hundred souls all told. All loyal comrades;
some, indeed, close friends who’d shared with him a thousand experiences, a
thousand dangers, a thousand joys and carousals. He thought of the flame-haired
girl, Krysty, with the deep, the luminous green eyes. Extinguished. Snuffed out.
Rage was like a sudden eruption of fierce white flame that licked through his
entire system.
He said, his voice taut, “We take the war to the enemy. We pay a visit to Jordan
Teague.”
Chapter Eight
DESPITE ORDERS, you kept to the shadows. The deep shadows. The deeper the
better.
You kept to the shadows despite orders, despite doomy warnings from your unit
leaders, despite hideously snarled threats of disembowelment or being flayed
alive or having your hands nailed to the wall. Despite all these and more, you
kept to the shadows because you were beginning to get… cautious.
A sec man’s life in the old days used to be different. It used to be fun, used
to be a laff riot. It meant you were top of the pile, king of the ville. Meant
you could do what you wanted, when you wanted, for as long as you wanted, and
free. Mocsin was open city for the sec men, and you could tool along its streets
and whatever you saw was yours. Not for the asking—you didn’t need to ask for
anything. It was all yours for the taking. Yours by right of conquest. Didn’t
matter what it was, you had an open license on it. Food, booze, men, women.
Whatever was your fancy, it was yours.